The digital media industry has evolved greatly within the past several years, with consumers now able to access large amounts of media content, for example music, videos, television shows, and movies, at any location or time of day, using a wide variety of computing systems, handheld entertainment devices, smartphones, or other types of media device.
Media content can be delivered by various means, including allowing users to download individual media items, such as songs or movies, to a particular device for later offline playback; or to access streamed channels of media content being broadcast in realtime to multiple devices, in a manner similar to broadcast or cable television.
Advances in network technology have increased the speed and reliability with which media content can be transmitted to individual media devices. This has enabled functionality such as allowing a user to be able to select between media streams or channels in an on-demand fashion, rather than tuning to a particular channel to receive a predefined transmission. Features that enhance the user's ability to access, view, and switch between different media channels can improve the overall user experience. These are generally the types of environments in which embodiments of the invention can be used.